


Both

by the_most_beautiful_broom



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:42:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23234185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_most_beautiful_broom/pseuds/the_most_beautiful_broom
Summary: “Emori doesn’t understand why I’d want to go back up.”Their backs are against the wicker, just waiting now, as the balloon floats downward.“Emori’s my sister,” Harper clarifies. “She thinks I should be scared, and just leave it behind. But if I left, if I never went up again, then everything I’ve lost would be for nothing.”It hovers in the air, like the snow, like a balloon.“All my life,” Monty says, “I’ve found certainty in science. In numbers, quantifying things. But...this has shown me. You have, I mean. There’s a beauty in the most barren of science, and my equipment and notes cannot account for it. And I thought it was science, logic, before, but now I see: the only person that could’ve taken me to the stars was you.”{a marper Aeronauts AU based heavily off the 2019 movie}
Relationships: Monty Green/Harper McIntyre
Comments: 6
Kudos: 8
Collections: Non Anonymous TROPED Collection





	Both

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for round 1 of Chopped, but couldn't bear to cut it to 5.5k so here we are. The required tropes were (1) Harper McIntyre Centric (2) Road trip (or other journy) AU (3) strangers to lovers, with a theme of A N G S T.

“Stop the carriage!”

Harper’s voice echoes around the stuffy box of the carriage, which clambers to a stop, but not soon enough. She fumbles with the latch, and then her heavy coat catch in the small exit, but she pushes out; Harper clenches her eyes shut, breathing in the filthy London air like the purest oxygen, trying to slow the rush of the flashback. 

_The balloon plummeting through the sky...the sun rippling through the deflated canvas...wind whistles and clouds rush past......a man falls too..._

“Harper!”

Her sister’s voice cuts through the suffocating fog of her memories, and Harper jolts back to her surroundings. 

“Harper are you alright?” Emori jumps out of the coach, into the busy street. “You don’t have to—”

“I just need a moment,” Harper manages, knowing her shaky voice isn’t fooling her sister more than herself, “I’ll be fine.”

Emori’s hands come to Harper’s arms, reassuring. “With all you’ve been through, no one will think any less of you if—”

“I would,” Harper says, and the fog clears from her mind. “I would think the worst of me.”

She straightens, and Emori lets go of her arm. The sisters share a long glance—worry in the eyes of one, determination in the face of the other—and they get back into the carriage. 

Through the smeared windows, Harper watches the London streets roll by. Smoggy, dirty, dingy, but alive. 

Today, she’ll make history. 

She’ll pilot a hot air balloon higher than anyone, man or woman, has ever flown. Through the smog over London, through the clouds atop that, aloft to—well, to who knows where. That’s the beauty of it. 

The carriage stops at the performers’ entry at the fair, and as they’re waved through, Harper draws the drapes at the windows of the carriage, opens a compact. A coat of white powder over her skin, two puffs of the prettiest pink for her cheeks. She fills in her lips in a shade of red that would make her mother aghast, and goes over her eyebrows with a bit of coal. Next to Emori, still in her muted dress with a natural flush in her skin, she feels outlandish, but the makeup isn’t for seeing up close. It’s so the crowd can see her.

The carriage stops again, and Emori adjusts the hem of her own dress. 

They’re quiet.

The clock from the church in the town center, a mile away, begins to chime. 

At last, Emori stops fiddling with her skirt. “Be careful, alright?”

Harper closes the mirror and smiles gently at her sister. “Always. I’ll see you after.”

Emori nods, nervous, fixes her mouth into a reassuring smile, then slips out of the carriage. 

A moment later, Harper hears the coachman dismount.

Harper unwraps her thick overcoat, revealing a ridiculous dress of frills and feathers. She peeks out the window of the carriage and though the area she’s been parked is empty, she can hear the roar of the crowd. She’s at the back of the amphitheater and still she can hear their chattering and the laughter. There’s the usual hawking of a carnival, the smells of spun sugar and skewer-cooked meat, but above it all rises her balloon. 

Silk, red and white striped, proudly standing 25 meters tall, the vast rope webbing barely keeping her earthbound. At her base will be more than a dozen men holding the ends of the ropes, the ones that aren’t anchored to the ground. The basket will be hovering, swaying, longing for the air, just as Harper does. 

Harper closes the drapes and ties a ribbon in her hair, then opens the door of the carriage. The wind is cold, but she doesn’t feel it, just the energy crackling in the air, in her. It’s time. 

They’re ready, she’s ready—a bit late, but it’s her job to build anticipation—and it’s time for the show to begin. 

Harper plants her feet firmly on the perch and picks up the reins. She draws a deep breath, reaches under the seat and pulls out a whip, lets out a breath again. The whip cracks in the air, sharp, and she hears a murmur from the crowd. She cracks again, moves the reins, and the horses jump into action. 

They turn in the circle, four beautiful bays, then begin to run. Harper shakes out her shoulders, makes her face smile, and the horses pull the carriage into the amphitheater. 

The crowd roars when they see her. 

Painted like a chorus girl, hair streaming behind her; she looks fanciful and free and unearthly and they adore her. She grins and waves at them, cracks the whip in midair to spur them on, and they go wild.

The opposite can be said of the man already in the balloon basket. Still presenting to the crowd, Harper sneaks a look at him as the horses do a lap around the stage. He looks studious and serious, the kind of man who loves something to obsession, then the study sucks all the delight out of him. So, this is Monty Green, the scientist who contracted her to pilot him. She’s only met him through letters (and saw him once, when she snuck into a presentation he gave at the Royal Society, about predicting the weather from above the clouds, but women weren’t technically allowed in the Society, so she can’t really admit to that).

She inclines her head to him, slightly, a nod for him and not the crowd, then tosses her hair and cheers, and the crowd yells back at her. Harper beckons to one of the men holding down her balloon, who tosses her the rope he’s holding. She clucks her teeth so the horses know where to run, and leaps from the carriage, swings on the rope; it’s a good landing and Harper figures the people paid almost £2 to see her, so she turns a cartwheel and leaps into a flip before her feet touch the platform. 

“You’re late, Ms. McIntyre.”

She looks up, and the scientist’s expression is swaying between dismayed and impressed. Harper turns to the other side of the amphitheater, bows again. 

“We are creatures of the skies,” she says under her breath, behind a beaming smile. “We have no respect for manmade clocks.”

She walks around the basket, and then turns to the crowd, even as she addresses him. “Mr. Green,” she calls, and the crowd quiets as the man flushes from the attention alone. “What kind of gentleman are you, that you haven’t helped me into the basket yet?”

Monty ducks his head, flustered, immediately holds out a hand to help her and Harper almost feels bad; surely he can’t think she means that. Not after she rode in with enough feathers to disguise in a coop. 

She takes his hand—he’s stronger than he looks, interesting—and when he pulls her up into the basket, she stumbles dramatically, ending up in his arms. 

“Impertinent,” she calls again, and the crowd loves that even more. She takes mercy on him and swirls out of his arms gracefully, curtseying to him and the amphitheater in turn. 

Monty clears his throat. “Alright, are you ready?”

Harper looks up at the balloon, full above her. The crowd seems to dim, and all she can hear is the spurt of flame filling it, the ropes straining against the side of the balloon, and the pounding of her heart. 

She looks back again, and the first real smile ghosts her face. “You have no idea how ready I am,” she says quietly. 

Monty looks like he didn’t expect the sincerity, but he smiles back, almost automatic. It’s the dearest smile, the kind of genuine in the face of a person who never is anything less than honest. Harper’s heart clenches at that, admiring. It’s not just a nice smile, she decides, but a kind face. Earnest and true, and calming to look at. 

“Ready, aboard?” One of the men holding the ropes calls, and the moment breaks. Harper looks down at him; Miller, one of the circus men. She nods at him, and feels the pounding in her chest again. It’s real, this is happening, she’s about to fly again. 

He nods back. 

“One more show, Mr. Green,” Harper says, and she can feel her eyes smiling. She reaches up, remembers the ease of moving around a basket like breathing, hands find rope she just knows will be there. She pulls herself onto the rim of the basket, and raises her hands. 

The crowd falls silent. 

“Ladies and gentlemen,” she calls. “This balloon, on which I stand, is like no other! In her, we’ll ascend higher into the air than any man, or woman, has ever gone before! Are you ready?”

The crowd cheers again and Harper looks over them. Young and old, couples and families, and teenagers and then she sees him.

Brown curls, brown eyes, broad shoulders, she’d recognize him anywhere.

Bellamy?

Harper digs her fingernails into her palms, stupid. Of course it isn’t him. The crowd is still cheering and the mirage is gone, but she’s almost breathless now. 

She’s fine. 

She smiles broadly, hoping it reads as excitement, not mania. “The French managed 7010 meters into the air...don’t you think we can best that??”  
They scream ‘of course’, ‘absolutely’, and for ‘England’, and she raises her chin, defiant. “Today, we will break their record!”

They’re not listening to her, so caught up in their frenzy. 

“Now, Mr. Green,” Harper murmurs under her breath, and looks down at the Monty, looking like he has no idea what she means. Harper gestures to the rim of the basket and his eyes widen ever-so-slightly, before his chin jerks slightly to the side. 

“Uh, no, this is your—”

“Come on, Mr. Green,” Harper calls and the crowd catches on and starts chanting for him. She holds out a hand and he looks at her for a long moment, an unreadable expression on his face. 

He takes her hand. 

She pulls him up, doesn’t let go, turns to the crowd and raises both their hands, waiting.

And then the fireworks go off.

She can only see the edges of them from facing the crowd, but they crackle brilliant colors, and she looks sideways at Monty. His head is tipped back, looking at the heavens. His honest face is open and marveling, and Harper wonders, in spite of herself, what he’ll think of the stars. 

The fireworks aren’t just for show; they’re a distraction. While the amphitheater is looking upwards, Harper hops back into the basket, moving once again on instinct. She checks the rigging, the valves on opposite sides of the basket. She feels the basket shift as Monty climbs down, not gracefully, not not disturbing anything. 

“Ready?” she asks him without looking. 

“I just need to retake my ground readings,” he says, flipping through a notebook that seems to have just materialized in his hands. “And then a final check of the equipment...”

Harper pushes by him, maybe on purpose, counting the sandbags at the base of the basket. She checks the valve line, looking up into the belly of the balloon again, then looks across at Monty. “Don’t touch this; got it?”

He looks up from the notebook, a tightness in his jaw. “I do know how a balloon works, Ms. McIntyre.”

Harper shrugs; it can’t hurt to overemphasize that pulling that particular line will let out the gas of the balloon. She looks out to Miller; he makes a salute, a flicking motion away from his cap, and drops his rope. The other men do the same. 

Monty has gone back to his notebook, and Harper takes a moment to center herself. 

“Then we’re off,” she says, quietly, to no one. 

Monty’s head jerks up. “What? No, we can’t—”

“It’s time to fly,” Harper says, and her voice is thick with excitement.

Monty gapes at her. “If my ground readings aren’t accurate, then everything I take from now on—”

He breaks off as the balloon jolts. The basket rocks, lifting, and he glares at her, running over to the boxes he’s brought, numerous equipment scattered atop them, frantically writing down what he reads there. 

Harper had stepped around the pile—she’d told him just how much he was allowed to bring, and Miller would’ve weighed it before—it’s all vaguely scientific nonsense to her. Maybe it is important, but she flies the way the wind and the sky beckon, not a piece of equipment. She supposes it is important though, to measure their altitude. 

They do have a record to break, after all. 

Harper ducks, reaching down to a sandbag, her fingers closing around the warm sand. She drops a handful off the side, streaming through her fingers. 

“Look up from your book, Mr. Green,” she says, watching the sand float on the wind. “The sky awaits.”

The crowd cheers, the basket lurches, the balloon fills, and then they’re starbourne.

—

Ten minutes after they’re out of sight of the amphitheater, Harper lets out a breath. The theatrics, the show of it, is what pays for expeditions like this. She never loves it, but she’s good at it, and it works. 

She pulls a cloth out of one of the pockets of her petticoats, wipes her face. Red and black and white come away on the cloth and she opens and shuts her mouth, relishing the feeling. The costume is next, and she fiddles with the corset for a couple of minutes until resigning herself.   
“Could you?”

Monty is perched on the ground on the other side of the basket, still scribbling, and looks up at her words. His brow furrows for a moment, and then she sees him swallow, uncomfortable. She wants to roll her eyes—it’s nothing dramatic, just a corset—but she does need his help. He comes over to help her and Harper turns. Independent of the fact that he’s undressing her, she feels warmer. It’s the proximity, she realizes, for the higher they climb, the colder the air grows.

The corset goes slack and Harper steps away from Monty, missing the warmth. She pulls on a jacket, glancing back across the basket. Monty is back to his notebook, writing again.

“You should put on your oilskins, Mr. Green.”

He keeps writing. 

He rips off a page, rolls it carefully, then reaches into one of the baskets and pulls out a pigeon. He attaches the paper to it, and releases it carefully.

“What are you sending?” Harper asks, pulling her hair out of the ribbon and braiding it out of her face. 

“Our readings,” Monty says, and nothing else. 

“Good to know something will pass on, if we die,” Harper says, sort of kidding. 

He doesn’t say anything to that either. 

Harper looks up, the sky is around them now. Below and abreast of them, instead of just above them. But one monstrous cloud, darker than she’d like, is ahead of them, and she frowns at it. 

— 

Everything around them is clouds, heavy and still, and the earth might as well be above them; they can’t see it. 

She closes her eyes as a memory overtakes her. 

It had been sunny then, the basket bathed in warmth. Bellamy had fiddled with the valves while she carefully measured sand over the side of the basket. They had paused to consider the sun and the clouds and the serenity of it all. 

“What more felicity can fall to a creature, than to enjoy delight with liberty,” Bellamy had said, accent tripping over the English verse. “And to be the lord of all the workers of nature…”

“To reign in the air from earth to the highest sky,” she had recited back, completing the poem, “and to feed on flowers and weeds of glorious feature.”

“To take whatever thing doth please the eye.”

But this voice isn’t in her memory and the clouds aren’t golden, but dark and foreboding; Harper blinks and turns to Monty.

He looks up from his book, almost embarrassed. “Spenser, the Fate of the Butterfly. One of my favorite poems.”

Harper reels from the memory and the reality of reality. “I, um,” she steadies herself, “wouldn’t have pegged you as a poet.”

Monty tilts his head, watching her carefully, unsure what she’s dealing with, but perceptive that something is there. “Men of science can enjoy words as well, Ms. McIntyre.”

The reminder she needs.

Harper looks over the clouds. “My husband loved that poem.”

She doesn’t need to look at him to feel his discomfort. To his credit, he doesn’t apologize; he hasn’t done anything wrong. She realizes he hasn’t returned to writing either. 

“I would have liked to have met him.” 

Everyone says that.

It’s been years, but sometimes it’s still fresh; Harper keeps her voice light. “I’m not sure he would’ve liked you.”

“Why not?” He doesn’t sound offended, just curious. 

Harper looks back at him, smiles softly. “We’re people that do, not people who study.”

He takes that well enough.

The sky rolls though, a crack of thunder that feels different than it does from the safety of the ground. 

Harper looks up, around. “I know you’re the scientist,” she says, “but are you sure the weather will hold? Because it feels—”

“Quiet,” he says, and in a tone she doesn’t recognize. He holds out a hand and his eyes are closed; he’s listening. 

The silence is deafening, and then a flash of lightning that makes Harper flinch. She looks at her gloves, notices moisture clinging to them. Thunder rumbles again, and Harper looks back at Monty, who leaps into motion, consulting his books, flipping between numbers and dials and pages and gauges. 

He’s panicking, she realizes, and if he was tracking the storm just now, that can’t be a good thing. 

“We’re in a cumulo,” Harper says, evenly, “not a great place to be if your readings were wrong.”

“My readings weren’t wrong,” he says sharply. “Everything I took this morning showed no—

“Hang your readings; this is a storm,” Harper snaps, watching his jerky movements. “You’re not proving anything to anyone; put that away. We need to batten down.”

Thunder and lightning seem to no longer be independent of each other.

“On the brightside,” Monty says, and Harper wonders if it’s for her or himself, “the balloon isn’t made of anything to attract lightning.”

Scientists. 

“Consider if we do, though,” Harper says, snapping his books shut, and shoving the metal equipment into chests, “that the gas keeping us afloat is a cocktail of hydrogen and oxygen.”

“Then we won’t be alive long enough for you to gloat,” Monty retorts. 

But he joins her in hastily putting his equipment away.

The sky is churning, angry like the sea, flashes of lightning shooting through it. Harper is antsy with nervousness, knowing the worse hasn’t come yet, but not daring it to. 

It does anyways. 

The basket throws them, wrenches itself through the sky, being whipped each way by the balloon in a whirlwind. Lightning smashes and then the clouds empty themselves; rain lashes from every direction. 

Monty makes a surprised sound and dives for the remaining equipment, turning them rightside up and checking—

“Enough with your measurements!” Harper yells, clinging to the side of the basket.

Monty shakes his head, water streaming down his face. “It’ll tell us how to get out—”

The basket throws them again, and Monty hits the side of it, hard. Harper moves fast, pinning him against the side of the basket. 

“Listen to me,” she yells, “I get us out of here, alright? Not your instruments.”

His eyes are a little wide, panic that’s natural from the fury of the storm, so Harper doesn’t move until she registers understanding in them. He nods, just a little, and then the basket lurches again. Harper feels herself fly through the air and she grunts when she lands on her shoulder. She picks herself up, and her stomach drops when she sees Monty. 

He’s bleeding.

Blood is seeping out of his head, bashed against the crate that holds the pigeons. She’s frozen for a moment, watching him. He touches his head uncertainly, staring at the red on his hand when he pulls it back again. 

Thunder shakes their basket and Harper feels the lightning strike nearby, tastes it on the air. 

“We...it’s too late to descend,” Monty says hazily, looking at his fingertips as the rain dilutes the blood there.

“We don’t descend,” Harper says, feeling in her belt. Her knife. She blocks out the man who purchased it for her, their initials carved in the handle. Thunder roars and the rain is plastering her hair to her face, but she reaches the edge of the basket.

“We don’t?”

“I told you, Mr. Green,” Harper calls over her shoulder. “We’re bound for the skies. Nothing less.” 

She slashes at the sandbags on the ballast. Sand pours and they rise.

She looks over her shoulder, and Monty is standing in the middle of the basket, watching her. 

“You’re incredible,” he says simply. 

And then he smiles, his simple honest smile again. 

The air goes cold, and Harper only has a moment to register what’s coming before it hits and then it’s too late; she’s too far from the edge of the basket—they’ve hit a pocket of cold air. The balloon plummets. 

She screams, everything falls, and then she feels herself lifting, descending slower than the balloon. Rain and clouds blur her vision, her eyes streaming, and Harper grabs about her wildly, but nothing. Then her back hits canvas, which is no good, no good at all, because it means they’ve hit the bottom of the balloon. Harper grabs around but she can’t find purchase, and then gravity pulls her again. She hears Monty land hard, a groan and she’s so nervous about that wound on his head, but then she realizes she hasn’t landed yet. She strains and feels the rough wicker of the basket, but it’s not enough to pull her in. 

She finds a rope, clenches it, and the balloon remembers to fly again. 

The rain is lashing, she’s blind, she’s underneath the basket, and her life depends on her fingertips. 

“Harper! Harper!”

She hears Monty yelling her name, and she thinks stupidly that he hasn’t called her anything other than Ms. McIntyre this whole time. 

“I...I can’t,” she calls, feebly, the reality sinking over her. She can’t climb a rope, in the rain, hundreds of meters above England. She can’t. 

“Hold on,” comes the command from above. Through the rain she can hear him fumbling and Harper counts her fingers, pressing them one by one into the coarse rope, anything to focus on something other than her burning arms. 

“Here!”

She opens her eyes and he’s impossibly close; she realizes belatedly that he must’ve tied himself into the basket, dangling over to pull her back. His hands close over her arms and Harper grits her teeth, begging herself, him, to not let go. 

He pulls. 

Her arms feel like fire and the rain lashes like it too, trying to pull her down to the ground. He yells, and Harper’s feet are on the edge of the basket. She lurches over the edge of it, arms giving out as she tumbles to the floor. She feels Monty collapse beside her but she can’t move. 

She’s alive.

She didn’t fall. 

She gives herself a moment, just one more, then pushes herself up on arms that feel like rubber. She stumbles to the side of the basket, yanks a last rope, and a sandbag plummets. To the other side of the basket, then, another rope and another ballast. 

“Hold on,” she says, and she means for it to sound stronger than it does. “We still need to get above this.”

She means for him to grab onto the basket, but Monty reaches for her, and she lets him because the world is just this wicker frame. She falls back to the ground of the basket, burrows into his chest and feels his arms close around her. He’s holding too tightly, terrified, but she’s clutching at him too and she clenches her eyes shut. The rain whips and the basket lurches, once, twice, and she loses count as they’re jolted around by the storm.

And then it’s still. 

The mist lightens, there’s no rain, and sunshine cascades over the basket. They made it, the storm is below them, they’re alive.

They don’t move though, tangled in their soaked clothes, and even as the sun sinks in, Harper doesn’t let go.

— 

The thunder now is a distant rumble, an echo. 

From up here, they can see the farther than seems possible. Under a sea of clouds lie hills, rivers, plots of lands and different crops, stretching. 

Monty and all his instruments one one side of the basket, balancing it as Harper tries to repair the damage of the storm; he sits dutifully, writing frantically in his notebook. Harper is perched in the rigging, a rope knotted around her waist, matching the one she’d insisted on tying around Monty’s, and she yanks on a knot in the basket. 

“There,” she says, satisfied, to herself. The knot will hold, the basket should be steady now. “Stronger than she looks.”

She thinks she feels Monty’s eyes on her, but when she looks back at him, he’s very focused on the notebook. 

Harper closes her eyes, the sun on her face. She blinks slowly, languid. “Mr. Green.”

“Hmm?” he mutters distractedly, from his perch with his equipment. 

“Monty,” she says, and he looks up. Stares at her for a beat, and then she points and he turns to follow her direction. 

His lips part in surprise. 

A rainbow. 

But it’s different up here. It’s almost tangible, the colors glinting in the sun, something from a dream. Underneath it, the sun casts a shadow of their balloon onto the storm clouds below. 

“An aureole,” Monty breathes, awestruck. His hand extends almost of its own volition, towards the marvel of nature. 

Harper’s mouth turns upwards before she recognizes the smile. 

He’s finally caught up in the wonder of it. They’re flying, above England, above the storm, above the world. Everything that’s ever troubled them, ever clouded their lives, is a thousand meters below. 

“I believe,” she says, after a couple of minutes, “you should be writing about this in your notebook?”

He laughs, a warm and unaffected sound that seems to catch him by surprise, but he doesn’t move. 

—

And still they climb. 

Monty has returned to his instruments and notebook, and Harper sits on the edge of the basket sideways, a foot flat on the rim, the other dangling into the basket. The sun warms them, a mercy, since they’re still soaked from the storm. Though Harper’s jacket is bulky, the rubber of it is drying faster than Monty’s suit. He shivers, but continues, resolute, and Harper looks over the sky. 

“Have you been up this high before?”

Harper looks over at his question, then back to the world. She nods. “Once.”

Monty seems to consider that. “Was it with—”

“Yes.”

She doesn’t look back, but in her peripherals, he nods. 

“We have enough time for it...if you want, you could tell me about him?”

Harper leans her head back against the rope at her back. There’s a thought. Just tell. Not hear condolences, or apologies, or assurances, just talk. 

She wants to. 

Instead, she swings both legs to the floor of the basket, bending to the bag she stuffed her corset into. 

“Doesn’t your forehead hurt?” she asks, pulling a piece of cloth out, and a bit of alcohol. 

Monty blinks, frowns. “Sorry. I guess...sorry. I didn’t mean to make light of it.”

“Does your forehead hurt?” she asks again, coming over to sit in front of him. 

He looks at her, wary. She looks back, unblinking. 

“No. I can’t feel it.”

Harper purses her lips; that’s not good. She raises the cloth to his face and he winces when she touches the blood matted in his hair. But he lets her clean it. 

“It will heal,” Harper says, almost conversational. “You shouldn’t have a scar.”

When she pulls the rag back, he’s staring at her. Considering, something like empathy in his eyes. She looks away, folds the rag carefully, and retreats back to her side of the balloon. A moment later, she hears the scratching of a pen as he continues to write. 

— 

She thinks the first butterfly is a fluke, perching delicately on the edge of the basket. Harper stares at it, disbelieving. At this altitude? And after the poem? But then another comes, and another, their yellow wings flapping as they envelope the basket. 

Monty laughs as he rises to his feet, unsteady for a moment and he touches his head and then he’s mumbling something about air currents and how Jasper was right, and Harper tunes him out. 

Butterflies.

She feels a lump in her throat, something more than the altitude, the ache she suppresses rather than admit she misses him. Misses him so much it hurts, but not all the time, sometimes she misses who she was with him, but that feels like betrayal, so she pretends she doesn’t feel anything at all. 

They’re yellow, marigold, flitting on the wind. 

He’d believed her, thought her incredible. Told her to fly, invested with her, wanted her success and happiness more than his own. And he’s gone, she’s alone, and she misses him but not all the time, which is horrible.

A butterfly lands on her arm and Harper breathes slowly, shallowly. 

Monty is beside her, reaches out gently, and the creature steps from the rubber of her coat onto his finger. Harper looks up, and Monty is watching her carefully, as the sky dances yellow around them. 

Harper breaks away, looking around. “They’re wonderful,” she says.

Monty steps back too, almost reluctant. “Where do you think they’re going?”

Harper lifts a shoulder, looking over them. “Wherever the wind takes them.”

“Sounds familiar.”

She looks over and he smiles at her and Harper can’t think of a reason not to smile back. She lifts an arm outside the basket, waving it up and down; the butterflies part in a wave around her. 

“He’d have liked these,” she says, not because she wants to, but because he did offer. 

Monty doesn’t say anything, just looks at the butterflies in their dance. 

Harper does the same.

And then they’re gone, flitting out of the balloon as quickly as they had drifted into it. Harper’s eyes are wet, and she’s not sure why, but it’s bubbling inside of her and she’s talking before she can tell herself to not. 

“My husband was the bravest man, the wildest. He saw possibilities in anything, everything; when everyone else could tell you why not, he would find a way. He loved butterflies like he loved anything else, because they were beauty for him to delight in. He delighted so well, let life wash over him.”

The yellow fades on the horizon, and Harper looks back into the basket. 

Monty has no interest in his book now, only regarding her. 

“Thank you,” she says.

He holds her gaze, and doesn’t look away.

— 

By the time Monty’s instrument reads 6700 meters, there’s a layer of ice on the canvas of the balloon. Only 400 meters to go until they’ve beat the French.

She can almost understand why Monty observes his instruments so obsessively. 

“Are these accurate?” she asks, because it beats stewing in her nerves.”Because if they are, it’s -6C.”

“They’re accurate,” Monty says.

She looks at him. “That’s cold.”

“Yes. Would you write it?”

She raises an eyebrow, surprised he trusts her with the all important notebook.

6900 meters.

“Look out, Bonaparte,” she murmurs.

7000 meters.

And then, she breathes out, watches her breath fan out in the cold air. 

7100 meters, and a moment more...

“There it is,” Monty says, voice hushed.

That’s it. The record. They’re still rising. 

The dial says 72000 meters. 

She writes it in the book, notes the temperature. It’s everything she’s ever wanted. The record, hers, and it feels like everything and nothing; the air is frozen and quiet.

Monty rips out the page, ties it to the pigeon. It flaps uncertainly, then plummets; the other pigeon in the cage is stone cold. 

Monty turns to her, reaches out a hand. She shakes it.

—

“You don’t have oilskins, do you?”

She knows the answer when she asks the question, but she’s still dismayed with the curt shake of his head.

“You have four thermometers and you couldn’t bring a sufficient coat?”

“I had a weight limit,” he says, voice almost petulant. “Cold is relative.”

It most certainly isn’t, but something is off. Monty’s movements are sluggish, and she realizes why he had her write in the book—his fingers must be frozen.

“Time to go down,” she says quiet, resolute. She heads for the valve line, but Monty jumps in front of her. 

“Not yet,” he insists. “Just another couple minutes.”

Harper frowns, why hasn’t she noticed sooner that his focus is scattered? “No, now. You’ll freeze, Monty.”

“We need to hit the 9100m the French were aiming for.”

She balks at him. “We absolutely do not; we need to get to the ground, and with our lives as trophies.”

“Please,” he says, blinking slowly, and Harper’s stomach sinks.

“Monty, you’re freezing.”

“Harper,” he parrots, “Every 100m we ascend is new to science. These measurements, they’re instrumental. They could define everything. What do we have to lose?”

“Our lives.”

“This could be more important than our lives.”

His earnest eyes stare into hers and Harper remembers the first letters they exchanged, an inconsequential scientist claiming to be a meteorologist—whatever that meant—explaining what weather prediction could do for everyone. Farms saved, crops delivered, roads prepared, crises averted. 

She looks back at him. “You understand there is a time where we cannot go any further, else we will, with absolute certainty, die?”

He nods.

“And that call, when we must descend, is mine. Alone.”

He nods again, hope on his delirious face. 

Harper prays as she cuts another sandbag.

— 

His nose begins to bleed at 9020m; she asks him to reconsider but he won’t. 

He can’t write at 9060m; he still refuses.

At 9065m, he’s shaking violently. 

Harper stares at the ice cracking on the canvas of the balloon, looks back at the man in the basket with her. “I want to hit 9100m as much as you do, Monty, but we have to turn around.”

“35m more.”

“Damnit, Monty, this is not—”

“How come your husband risked both your lives for his own recklessness, but when I ask to do the same for science, you won’t allow it?”

She slaps him.

Doesn’t mean to; she’s never hit another person in her life.

But she does.

They stare at each other, and Monty looks down first, knows he’s gone too far. Harper is suddenly furious. She’s freezing on top of the world, with a man who dares throw her dead husband at her, and he doesn’t understand, just as nobody does, everyone thinks they know her but they’re wrong, they’re all wrong.

“Reimagine the story,” she grits. ”Instead of Icarus and his faithful wife, imagine a pilot pushing for grandeur...and her husband.”

Monty’s mouth opens slightly, and Harper feels the sickest satisfaction curl over her stomach.

Fine. 

If she were to die in the atmosphere, among the stars, let the man who dies with her know of the time she should’ve died.

“I pushed us,” she tells him, voice sharp like shards. “We climbed too high, the seams of the balloon ripped, we spiralled. We couldn’t slow her down. We fell, from God knows how high, and we needed to lose more weight—”

“Harper, you don’t—”

“You will listen, Monty Green,” she says, eyes stinging with tears. “You are why we’re here and you will know.”

He’s silent.

“We threw everything out,” she continues. “Everything. All his instruments, the sand, every last bit. It wasn’t enough. We held each other, we were ready; it was right to go together.”

She breaks off. 

It would’ve been right.

The wind had whipped her hair around them, stinging both of them. Everything was roaring, racing, and Harper wasn’t afraid to die, wasn’t scared. They would die together, and it would be alright, they’d take on the next adventure together, or they wouldn’t, and that would be that.

But then.

Then she had felt his arms loosen and she was confused, what had he discovered, what solution. She’d watched him climb the basket, curious what ropes he’d untie, but then he’d smiled at her. He’d thanked her for taking him to the stars, her sweet husband, hair blowing around them as the heavens dropped them.

And then he leaned back.

Harper feels the tears freezing on her face and she refuses to look at Monty. She doesn’t want his pity, doesn’t want his forgiveness, doesn’t want an apology, only for him to understand.

“Do not be responsible for the death of another,” she says, lips tight. “You will never forgive yourself.”

Ice creaks over them, and the basket around them, and as her words settle, Monty nods.

“I’m so sorry, Harper.”  
He is, she knows it. She’s sorry too, but it can’t resurrect anyone or deliver their balloon; it’s only a feeling.

“It’s time,” she says, and this time Monty doesn’t protest.

—-

She pulls the gas release valve.

Nothing happens.

She tries again, and again, throwing her whole weight against it, begging, her hands shredding from the rope as she slides down it, rather than relent to her weight. And she realizes three things: 

  1. It’s frozen. The release valve is frozen, which means they cannot release gas and so they cannot descend.
  2. Monty is unconscious. He slumps over quietly while she’s fighting with the valve and by the time she realizes that it’s frozen, he’s no longer awake, a steady drip of blood from his nose.
  3. The only way they’re getting to the ground is if she manually opens the valve.



It’s a simple realization. It’s either die slowly or climb the side of a frozen balloon. She drags herself to her feet, lightheaded and so, so cold, but out of options. She ties another rope around her waist, longer, and clumsily makes her way to the side of the basket.

“Stay alive,” she whispers to Monty, though she knows he can’t hear her. She hauls herself into the rigging. Each breath is like daggers in her lungs, and her fingers are white but turning black, and she can’t think beyond climbing higher, higher. She pushes upwards, mind closing in on her, mercilessly inching towards the top of the balloon, wondering if she’s still a murderer if this time she dies too.

— 

She’s being spun. 

For a moment, she wonders if she’s dead. Maybe it’s a dance, maybe she’s being reborn—but then her fingers are burning and her head is pounding and Harper opens her eyes.

Blue is everywhere.

The sky, the frozen balloon, her blurring vision, everything is inverted; she twists, getting her bearings, her rope has hooked her in the middle of the balloon. She’s hanging a good five meters above the basket, and the basket and balloon are both sinking.

Monty.

She coughs, a sudden rush of blood, and contorts, trying to look into the basket as she’s swung.

He’s there, mouth and nose full of blood, but still there. 

She reaches into her boot for the knife, and begins to swing. She gets closer, strains for one of the ropes floating around the basket, and they dance away from her fingers. She closes on one, keeps swinging. 

Maybe she’ll just keep swinging until they hit the earth.

No, that won’t do. 

The next time she’s close, she cuts the rope at her waist, clings to the rope from the basket, and she careens towards the basket. She makes it. Drops the knife, drops the rope, pushes herself off her chest and over towards Monty’s rumpled form.

There’s a pulse at his neck, but he doesn’t stir.

“Monty,” she whispers, he has to hear her, “wake up. Please. Please wake up, Monty, you have to, please.”

She’s too tired, she needs to lie down, but more than that she needs him to be alive. 

“Monty, please,” she realizes she’s crying, uncontrollable, a million demons haunting her, “I can’t do this again, Monty, please. Please.”

He stirs. 

Harper can’t stop crying, unsure what’s real anymore but needing it to be this, him. 

“Whoa, whoa,” he says, voice rusty. “It’s alright, you’re alright.”

And of course he’s trying to comfort her, but he doesn’t know how close they were, how close he was, and they’re still falling, and Harper just slumps over him, crying into his chest.

She feels him draw in a couple shaky breaths, willing himself to regain cognizance, and there’s an awkward hand patting her head.

“Are we descending?”

He asks it almost wonderingly, and Harper nods, exhausted, still not able to move.

Monty suddenly sits up, and when she looks at him, she recognizes the expression on his face.

Guilt, horrible, all-encompassing, guilt.

“I’ve been—”

“You have,” she says; she doesn’t want to hear it. She had been the same, once, the stars and the cold make one mad.

“I’m sorry.”

She nods again, sits up. Wipes her face, and he’s looking at her strangely. She realizes it’s at her hands. She looks at them too, they’re horrible. 

“I lost my gloves,” she says, obvious.

Monty stares, waiting. She doesn’t say anything, and so he goes over to her bag on fumbling steps, pulls out the same alcohol she used to clean his forehead. “This is going to hurt.”

She knows. But she holds out her hands and clenches her teeth. 

“Your poor hands,” he says it so quietly, carefully, and he rubs them a little bit. “I..I don’t know what you did, while I was out. But I know I didn’t deserve it.”

Harper sits still, lets him hold her hands, try to ease life back into them. She looks at him, his head tilted down, blood and ice caked on his face, eyes earnest, sad. 

It begins to snow. 

The lightest of storms, nothing like what they’ve been through, frozen water like cotton. Monty looks up, that familiar expression of wonder on his face. A snowflake catches in his lashes and Harper isn’t sure what she’s feeling but it’s a rush and it’s as simple and as sudden as the snow.

— 

“Emori doesn’t understand why I’d want to go back up.”

Their backs are against the wicker, just waiting now, as the balloon floats downward. 

“Emori’s my sister,” Harper clarifies. “She thinks I should be scared, and just leave it behind. But if I left, if I never went up again, then everything I’ve lost would be for nothing.”

It hovers in the air, like the snow, like a balloon. 

“All my life,” Monty says, “I’ve found certainty in science. In numbers, quantifying things. But...this has shown me. You have, I mean. There’s a beauty in the most barren of science, and my equipment and notes cannot account for it. And I thought it was science, logic, before, but now I see: the only person that could’ve taken me to the stars was you.”

—-

The snow isn’t falling.

It’s hovering, like it’s frozen in a picture, but Harper checks and they’re still falling. Monty is dozing, his head on her shoulder and she’s loathe to disturb him, but she moves her shoulder and he stirs.

“How is this possible?” she asks. 

He frowns. “It’s not. Um, we’d have to be travelling the same…”

He trails off and Harper feels her heart stop. 

“The same speed as snow,” Monty finishes slowly. “The balloon is collapsing.”

Harper jumps up, yanks on the valve. It doesn’t budge, wedged open from above, from when she’d climbed up there.

“Help me!” she barks, and Monty’s hands close on the rope above her. Together they pull, and duck when the line goes slack as something plummets from the valve. 

“What on earth—”

“It’s my shoe,” Harper says, mind already racing. “Later.”

“But if your shoe was up there, that means—”

“Later,” Harper says, sharply. She finds the knife again, and goes for the sandbags; her hands aren’t working. 

Monty doesn’t ask, takes the knife from her and they cut quickly. The sandbags plummet, and nothing changes. The balloon doesn’t billow, the wind whips and Harper feels dizzy and nauseous and like she should’ve just let them drift into space.

“We have to lose weight,” she finds herself saying, voice detached from her. “A lot of it.”

Monty heaves the doves’ chest over the side of the basket. She throws her corset bag, and it’s still not enough. His instruments chest, both of them straining to lift it...the balloon still falls. The individual instruments, still strewn around the basket, all four thermometers, out the basket.

“Jackets!” Monty realizes, and they shrug out of theirs. His wool, hers rubber, both over the side. He rips his notebook, his all important notebook, in half, stuffing the used pages into his waistband and sending the rest fluttering.

Nothing.

Harper can’t breathe. The sun is shining, the earth is getting closer and is this how she’s supposed to die? Was she meant to die this way the first time around but he hadn’t let her and so how the universe finds her here again? What sick penance is this?

“Climb up into the hoop.”

Harper’s head is full and groggy and she shakes it, not understanding Monty. “What?”

“The hoop, climb up into it; we lose the basket.”

Harper doesn’t understand, but she does it, climbing clumsily into the circle above the basket, waiting. Monty follows, lays down on the thin balsa of the hoop, wraps his legs around it, and then leans down.

The basket lurches when he cuts the rope on his side. He cuts another. Another. The last. 

The balloon slows. 

They wait, breathless, the ground so close now. 

The balloon slows, yes, but not enough. 

“It’s not enough,” Harper says, and the words were supposed to be hers all along. Why had she let anyone else have them. “We’re still too fast.”

“It will be enough,” Monty says, staring at the ground, not understanding yet.

Harper smiles. “Monty, I was never supposed to survive this.”

He looks at her, understanding crashing over him, and he shakes his head vehemently, violently. “No. Harper, no, absolutely not.”

“It’s alright,” she says, eyes dry. “It’s because of you that I got to see the stars. Higher than anyone else. Thank you.”

“No!” he’s yelling, and she can see him shaking in an effort to stay put, not to jump across the hoop at her. But the earth is too close, and she has to jump soon for it to matter. He looks up, around, desperately, trying to find a way to her, to dissuade her.

His gaze locks upward, the balloon flapping.

“A parachute,” he mumbles.

She has to do it soon, has to jump so soon, or he’ll still die. 

“Harper, a parachute! We cut the cord that keeps the balloon in its shape, the silk will fill, and it’s a parachute.”

It’s now, she has to go now. She shakes her head. “It won’t work, Monty, I—”

“Harper, I will not return alone,” he shouts, and she looks up at him. “It will be both of us or neither of us.”

It’s now, now or never and she looks at the earth and at the most honest face she’s ever seen, begging her to not leave him as she has been left, and it’s never, it’s too late. 

“Both or neither,” she repeats quietly. 

He grins, the broadest most beautiful smile she’s ever seen, radiant; they wrap their legs amongst the ropes. 

He doesn’t stop looking at her, smiles a thank you; she closes her eyes and he cuts the rope. 

— 

Harper opens her eyes. 

The sky is above her, blue and broad and friendly, familiar. The ground beneath her, grass.

Every inch of her skin is raw, burned, shredded from being dragged. She’s still attached to the parachute. She feels herself lift slightly as it fills with wind, but doesn’t fully inflate. She’s grounded.

Monty. 

She closes her eyes, she can’t bear to turn her head. What if..?

Both or neither, she reminds herself. Both or neither, and she’s here, so he is too. 

She gathers her breath. “Monty!” she yells. It comes out weaker than she’d imagined; she licks her lips and tries again. “Monty!”

Silent. 

The whistle of wind in trees, the billowing of the canvas, a bird or two, curious. 

“Harper?”

It’s faint, but Harper’s hand covers her mouth. 

Both, she wants to sing. Not neither, but both.

She forces herself up. Her leg buckles under her and she nearly falls to the ground but she has climbed a balloon nine thousand meters into the heavens; she can walk. She leans heavily on her other leg, winces when she feels a crack in her ribs. 

“Monty!” she yells again. 

“Harper,” comes the reply, and it’s louder, weak but closer.

She laughs, turning in a field they’ve crashed in. Where...she sees him, in the distance, on his hands and knees, thrown from the parachute, but crawling towards her. She pushes towards him, and her face is streaked with tears when she reaches him. His skin is scratched, one leg is completely slack behind him, his shoulder too, but he is glowing. She touches his head wound carefully, hands hovering over his shirt, not wanting to hurt him anymore, but needing the reassurance; she rests her forehead against his.

“Can you stand?” she asks, hesitant.

“I’d rather not,” he says, false bravado, pain evident even in his current state.

They need help though, both of them. 

“And if I help you?”

He looks up at her, smiles a shadow of a smile he gave her on the hoop. He laughs, ever in awe. “Then I’ll stand.”

  
  
  



End file.
